Abyss
by Althea SaDiablo
Summary: A Xellos origin story in three parts- this is the first. No pairings, just angst.


Author's Note: Had this hanging around my hard drive for a while. Finally got up the courage to edit it, phew. And for once, this is going to be of a set length. Precisely three parts, of which this is the first. And, despite my vows that I would never write one, this is a Xellos-was-originally-a-human story, but I don't think it's like any that I've seen out there. Oh, and the dead woman in the beginning isn't Filia. This takes place at an indeterminate time in the past, but it is certainly before the War of the Monster's Fall. The setting is more generic fantasy than Slayers, in a way, though this is supposed to be, or rather, to become the Slayers world. And no, this is not specifically connected to any of my other stories. At least, not now. Might attatch it to another story I have floating around in my head, but that's if I ever get around to that one.  
Thanks to Majo for editing this for me, a while back . . . I appreciate it very much, you're fantastic. :-)  
Oh, and Neitzche is an awesome source for quotes.  
  
  
  
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."   
~Neitzche  
  
  
Death  
  
The temple was perfectly still and quiet. Brilliant light streamed through stained glass windows to throw bright panels of color across the stone floor. Tall, smooth stone pillars supported a gracefully arched ceiling, painted a rich blue with stars and constellations traced across it in gold. The high altar was silent and bare, waiting for the worshipers that would come for the evening service, waiting for the sun to set.  
  
The silence was clear and holy, the quiet of sacred spaces.  
  
Off to one side of the temple, illuminated by the slanting rays of colored light, a plain marble brier stood, a white shroud coving the one who lay there as if only asleep. The sunlight caught on silky, golden hair, separating each strand in precise and gleaming detail. It framed a fragile, perfect face marked by delicate features, and gave an unearthly translucence to pale skin.  
  
The priest stood there for a moment, entranced by the serenity and clarity of it all, before he noticed the man who knelt beside the brier, his head bowed with impossible anguish. A dark haired man clothed in the rough black cloth of mourning, shoulders slumped but still. He was mostly in shadow, but the priest could see the strength in his bent form, the power inherent in his coiled muscles. And he could feel the pain of a broken man, abandoned and alone.  
  
He walked forward slowly, his heart swelled with compassion. The mourner had to have heard his approach, but his head remained lowered. The priest stopped beside him, not quite daring to reach out to him, but wanting to give what comfort he could.  
  
"God takes his children back to himself," he said, quoting the prayer softly.  
  
The grieving man quivered, and then looked up at the priest through the strands of straight, dark hair that fell across his eyes. His gaze was intense, tortured. "God," he said, in a hoarse but clear voice, "is cruel indeed."  
  
"No, not cruel, my son," the priest said, regretfully. "His plan is beyond our comprehension, his actions are beyond our imagining. But it is all for the good, even though we cannot see it . . ."  
  
"For the good?" the words nearly exploded from the kneeling man, and he turned away from the priest and towards the brier once more. "What good could possibly come from this? No kind god would have taken her!"  
  
"I know, it is hard to see . . ." the priest raised his eyes from the dead woman, to the stars painted on the ceiling of his temple. "This world is cruel, but she has gone to a better place. God has taken her back to himself . . ."  
  
"She was killed," he said, flatly. "She was killed by demons."  
  
"Grieve," the priest said, gently. "Your pain is great, I know, but it will fade, with time."  
  
"With time?" Laughter exploded from him. "You have no idea, do you? You can't know . . . Gods, the pain . . ." he reached, and his fingertips brushed the dead woman's face, peaceful in its final repose. "Once, I touched her, just like this, and she smiled at me with such happiness in her eyes . . . and now she is beyond my reach forever, and she has taken it all with her. There is nothing else! There is no joy, there is nothing in this world for me with her gone. It is all ashes to me, it is nothing! I died, I died that day. I died when she died, I died . . ."  
  
The priest reached out to lay a hand on one shaking shoulder, and the man jerked away from his touch, then rose to his feet. His eyes were dark, clear of tears, and his face empty of all expression.  
  
"I will see her buried," he said, "and then I will go, and I will find the things that killed her. And I will kill them. And then I will find another, and another, until I have wiped them from the face of the earth."  
  
"Baron, you can't. Your duties, your life- god's justice will-" the priest began, but was cut off.  
  
"I will go," he said, his voice grim. "And if your god's justice exists, I will find it."  
  
The dark man turned, and left the priest standing by the brier in the silence of his temple.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Rumor spread through town quickly, especially where their lord was concerned. They reached even into the church, and eventually made their way even to the priest's ears. He heard it as he went about his daily regime of prayers, as he walked the dirty streets to dispense alms to the beggars who hid in the shadows of the buildings and stared at him with flat, unfriendly eyes even as he pressed food into their eager hands. The baron had gone mad, he heard them say to each other, their voices soft, their thickly accented speech barely intelligible to his ears. He no longer held audience, as he had without fail since he'd come with the crown's favor five years before. The grand feasts he'd once delighted in holding had stopped, and apparently would not start again. Indeed, he did not govern at all. He had put his chief adviser in charge of the affairs of the town and the land, and he was always either in his library or in the armory. The light in his tower burned far into the night, and he spoke of nothing to anyone. The kerns dropped their voices further, then. He researched demons, and his thoughts were fixed on death.  
  
The priest picked up his skirts to avoid a patch of mud, and looked up to the castle. Indeed, there was a light in the high tower, against the darkening of the cloudy sky, a light that shone despite the wail of mounting winds.   
  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Something woke him in the predawn darkness, something intruded into the plain room the priest kept his few possessions in. He came upright with a gasp, but only deep silence awaited him, and a charged feeling of electricity in the air. As if a storm hung over his cathedral, as if it waited only for that moment when it would break.  
  
He took to the dark streets, wrapping himself protectively in the warm folds of his cloak. The cold struck through fabric to strike an ache of sympathy in his bones, and he hugged the cloth tighter around his body. Somewhere in the dark streets a shutter banged rythmicly against stone. There was no other sound but that of the wind through the streets, grey and dim with the faint promise of dawn.  
  
He walked past the weathered boards and stained stone of the houses and worn shops, his feet automatically stepping over the gaps in the cobblestones, the deep ruts imprinted in the wet earth of the roadside. He knew where he was going, though he didn't know why. Something was calling him, guiding his footsteps along the half-remembered track to the castle. The stout wood of the gate to the courtyard, set into the thick stone wall, felt rough and strange beneath his hand, but it yielded to him without complaint, and opened on a grey courtyard. Somehow it did not surprise him to see a familiar dark form outlined in the faint light, leading one of the warhorses from the stable. Their breath steamed in the frosty air, and the only sound was the wet thock of hoof on earth, and the muffled clink of armor. The priest moved even as the baron raised his eyes to his face, and took the reigns unasked.  
  
He stood in the dirt of the stable yard and watched as the man yanked the girth of his saddle tight, and checked the bindings on the weapons affixed to the saddle. The chill of the early morning lessened not at all for the faintly lightening sky, that illuminated the metal heads of the weapons with an eerie luminescence. He shuddered back from the wickedly barbed points of the short lances, the unstrung bow and its quiver of arrows. "You are determined to do this, to throw away your life and lands to follow this path?"  
  
"I am," the baron said shortly, and picked up the sword that lay on the bench beside the horse trough. It slid into its sheath with the icy shiver of steel.  
  
"Please," the priest said, stroking the nose of the great warhorse. "Please, reconsider. You have a life here, lands, responsibilities. You cannot simply leave on this mad quest and-"  
  
"-and not come back." He slid a foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle, pulling the reins from the priest's grasp. "No, I am not coming back. I renounce it all- my lands, my title, everything. I have no need of it. I am dead to the world."  
  
He brought the horse around, and set his heels to its side, and with a clash of metal-shod hooves on stone they were gone. The priest stood and watched them as they disappeared through the open gate and down the road, a dark rider on a dark horse.  
  
"May you find an end to your suffering," the priest whispered softly, "and peace, at last." 


End file.
